Stippled Studfish Abstract For Talk At Departmental Retreat

I'm setting myself up for a strangely busy week this coming Wednesday through Sunday. I hope to be able to meet with others in Guntersville, AL, for an informal Alabama Imperiled Fishes Group meeting on Wednesday afternoon. On Thursday or Friday I hope to visit part of the Southeastern Fishes Council meeting at the same place in Guntersville. Saturday will be a short talk on what I've found with stippled studfish at our department's retreat at Wheeler State Park to the west of Huntsville. And on Sunday we're going to Estill Fork for our monthly dark-of-the-moon driftnetting, and one last monthly collection of telescope shiners for gill fluke examination. And I don't plan to miss teaching any classes, either.

So here's the Abstract of the talk I'll give on Saturday:

TITLE:

Looking for Stippled Studfish in the Tallapoosa River System

Bruce Stallsmith
Department of Biological Sciences
University of Alabama in Huntsville

ABSTRACT:
Many fish species in the southern United States are under threat, facing an increasingly imminent threat of extinction largely from habitat degradation. One such species is the stippled studfish, Fundulus bifax, endemic to the Tallapoosa River system of Alabama and Georgia. The requisite habitat for this species is clean water over clean sand in small or large streams. The species has apparently vanished in Georgia, and appears increasingly uncommon in Alabama. This has resulted in a global ranking of G2, Imperiled, from the Nature Conservancy. Twenty six Tallapoosa River drainage sites in Alabama were visited in 2008 in an effort to document the current status of this species. Many of these were locations where the fish has been collected since 1980, as documented in the University of Alabama Ichthyology Collection. At least one individual was found in six different creek systems in Coosa, Elmore, Randolph, and Tallapoosa counties. This is a contraction of what has been considered this species’ range, and appears to be the result of habitat degradation. The future of the species is in doubt with six disjunct populations being vulnerable to further habitat degradation and diminished gene flow.